The 2nd International Conference on Socio-Political and Technological Dimensions of Climate Change (SPTDCC) was held in Putrajaya Malaysia on 19-21 November 2012. This conference was co-organised by the Housing Research Centre of Universiti Putra Malaysia and the Centre for Sustainable Development (CSD) from the University of Central Lancashire, UK. This event follows the success of the 1st International Conference ‘Revisiting the Socio-Political and Technological Dimensions of Climate Change’ that washosted by CSD in partnership with Confucius Institute on 19-21 May 2011.

The SPTDCC conference attracted manuscripts and technical papers from range of disciplines falling into main three themes:

International Socio-Cultural and Political Issues;

Climate Change and Technology;

Corporate Social Responsibilities.

The conference had a strong emphasis on increasing energy efficiency measures for reducing carbon emissions in the construction industry. These core themes were supported by engaging Keynote Speakers, Chairs, Committee members, practitioners, and conference delegates. Above all, an expert panel discussion session created lively debate on a number of critical issues. Numerous questions arose from the floor following the main presentations, which sparked lively discussion and thought provoking debate. This specialised input, opinions and divergent responses allowed the future research agenda to be debated in some considerable depth. This culminated in the award of a best paper award by Construction Innovation (Emerald) to Dr Shari and Dr Soebarto for their paper “Current Sustainable Development Practices in the Malaysian Construction Industry: Stakeholders’ Perspective”.

Prof. Jack Goulding, Director of CSD, chaired the technical session exploring ‘International Socio-Cultural and Political Issues’ and presented high quality feedback, especially to young scholars contributing towards improvement of their ongoing research. It was particularly encouraging to see other UCLan participants, including Bruce Johnson and Dr Mike Clarke “Creating a Spark; generating public interest in renewable energy technologies” and Renuka Thakore “Fostering energy efficiency dynamics through Ex-Ante strategic Niche management: the UK perspective”. Of particular significance was the inclusion of a doctoral student (Renuka Thakore) who was specially chosen to become a panel member on the expert panel. Renuka was able to share her professional experience in performance analysis and the newly introduced energy efficiency measures in the UK housing sector – especially how developing countries can learn from measures undertaken in developed countries to strengthen their policies and procedures.